


Nowhere Left to Go - Goin's All We Know

by t0talcha0s



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Honest Hearts DLC, Zion, an exploration into explorers and emotions, in-game, some violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-14 21:36:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29548725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/t0talcha0s/pseuds/t0talcha0s
Summary: Ever since the Courier walked into the canyons of Zion Follow-Chalk couldn't help but feel like he was important. Important not only to him but to something beyond him, important to Zion, and the Mojave, important beyond himself even. Follows-Chalk couldn't help but enjoy traveling with him, couldn't help but want to continue doing so.
Relationships: Courier/Follows Chalk
Kudos: 5





	Nowhere Left to Go - Goin's All We Know

Across the canyon Follows-Chalk sees a caravan and Follows-Chalk sees the White Legs. A whole party of them. The caravan didn’t seem to notice as the first shot struck the rock at their feet. Follows-Chalk wondered if he should have warned them, if it was too late for that, if there was anything he could do armed with just his club that would make a difference anyway. Follows-Chalk shuffles to the back of the rock he is on, witnesses the horror as it drags on.

The White Legs outnumbered the caravan party and he figured they didn’t stand a chance. One of the White-Legs, hit by a lucky shot, went tumbling into the river at the bottom of the canyon. Another struck into a vicious pile of ooze. Follows-Chalk couldn’t stand to look at it, the violence and the horror. Sure he knew of fighting, somewhat, more so with the escalation of aggression in the valley lately, but this was different. This was a massacre. He just sat belly-down on an outcrop, hoping not to be seen, until the shooting ended. When it’s over he peeks above an agave plant, unexpectedly sees one of the caravan members stride across the bridge. He hadn’t believed the caravan would survive, not a single member, he couldn’t count on two hands the number of caravans the White-Legs had slaughtered on the trip up to New Canaan. He’d need many more for that. A whole tribe of hands maybe. 

The man wore a long black duster, scuffed boots, some large rifle strapped to his back. It didn’t look like a weapon Joshua would use. It was unrecognizable, high-tech, horrific. Follows-Chalk stared for a moment as the man removed his hat to wipe his brow. The scuff of his boots, his trim hips, the ease of his shoulders, the two gunshot scars stained into his forehead. A tough man he seemed, in looks and actions both. He watched the man from the rock and was tempted to lay there and watch him. Had to shake himself out of his awe. He hopped up from his outcrop and waved. The man didn’t even flinch.

“White Legs don't leave survivors often. You’re some kind of lucky, let me tell you.” The man laughed.

“Y’know” he said “you’re not the first person to tell me that.” 

And Follows-Chalk was right about that, his luck, his toughness. He could tell from the way he moved through the landscape, from the way he fought, from the way he knew to cook a gecko steak just so. It only really hit him when he first watched the Courier strike down a Yao Guai. He did it from a distance. A shot through the neck and suddenly the beast was lolling lifelessly on the cracked road that led its way up the mountain. Follows-Chalk was right in the middle of saying something, a self-satisfied little quip:

“Don’t have anything as nasty as a Yao Guai where you come from, huh?” The Courier turned from the shot with a laugh, half at the irony and half at the shock on Follows-Chalk’s face. 

“Remind me to tell you about deathclaws some time. Then remind me to me tell you ‘bout how I took down a quarry full.” He laughs again and Follows-Chalk has the distinct feeling that he’s missing something about this man. That the casual way he slings that hefty rifle back over his shoulder isn’t just the practiced motion of a soldier, but of something bigger than that. Something more important and twice as deadly. The sky is heavy with stars, drooping against the peaks. As they enter the Dead Horse camp he can’t quite figure out if he’s brought salvation or damnation. Hopes that Joshua can make the distinction better than he can.

The Courier comes out of Joushua’s cave with a set sort of confusion in his jaw. Not like he’s upset but like he’s thinking too hard about something beyond him. Or maybe he’s just upset. Follows-Chalk was never a man to understand the nuances of people who weren’t of his culture but he bets even if the Courier was a Dead Horse or he a Mojave native that the subtleties of the Courier’s thinking would still baffle him. 

“Everything alright?” The Courier looks over at him, settles his jaw back up into a smile. 

“Not a thing to worry about, Chalk. Let’s you and me get a move on, yeah? I wanna see that ranger station ‘fore dusk hits.” So he leads the Courier up the mountain. Sometimes the Courier walks in front of him and Follows-Chalk watches the stretch and pull of his calves against his trousers. It’s methodical the way he walks and the red dust of the canyon has settled into the seams of his clothing and the tops of his shoes. The Courier might appear to be a distant thing, something powerful and lovely that tickles the definition of awe, but Follows-Chalk watches him closer. He watches the way he trips on a rock heading down into the canyon and how he curses at the pain. He watches the way he’s quick to pull for his gun, how he takes a second to put it down when the disturbance is revealed as just a brahmin calf. He watches the way he snores as he sleeps and laughs too loud and gets the hiccups after downing an old-world soda too fast. 

It isn’t comfort he feels with the Courier then, but a desire to understand him. A sense of misplaced kinship. He doesn’t know why a man hired to travel with a caravan would bother sticking around after everything that happened. Why he cares so much about the valley, the Dead Horses, about Follows-Chalk. So he works up the nerve to ask him questions. 

The fire between them is nothing more than embers but the Courier blows on it anyway. A dense fog has settled over the canyon and they can barely see ten feet in front of them. The Courier’s outlined by the stiff flashes of popping fire. He’s removed his jacket, draped it over his shoulders like a blanket or a cape, getting ready to rest. He offers Follows-Chalk a cigarette. 

“Don’t try to smoke ‘em often but it’s a good night for it. Plus this way I can see you better.” Follows-Chalk is familiar with tobacco but not the uniquely ‘civilized’ variety of a cigarette. It’s a bit of a thrill to be offered so he warmly takes it and lets the Courier light it for him with an engraved lighter. It’s gold and gaudy and it doesn’t really seem his style. The Courier leans back and exhales with a satisfied smile. Follows-Chalk mimics the motion. “There we go. Don’t like sitting across from a man and not seeing his face.” 

“Are you often in the wild?” 

“More than not. The Mojave’s my home these days.” He smiled. Teeth too perfect for a wild man, words too charming for a liar. “I’ve got a penthouse but I don’t let it get to my head.” He chuckled but something about his tone made Follows-Chalk believe him. He sat sprawled across a log, one hand bracing himself half-upright on the wood, the other ashed his cigarettes onto the dirt. It was the posture not of a tyrant or a leader even but a man, half-crazy and all lovely. 

“What is the Mojave like?” 

“Wide,” his gaze was out over the mountain tops, right past Follows-Chalk’s ear. “Flat and sandy and wide. Ain’t nothing like Zion I’ll tell you. On a clear day you can see straight from the dam to Jacobstown, mountains rising just over Vegas.” He seemed to come back to the present, matching gazes with Follows-Chalk. “Ah I suppose that means nothing to you though. You’ll have to walk her to know her.” They sit in silence as the Courier puts out his cigarette, tucks it half-smoked back into the package, and flops over onto the ground, the bottom of his pack tucked under his head as a makeshift pillow, some banana yucca leaves piled under his hips and shoulders to pad against the cold of the ground. He holds up a hand and waves at Follows-Chalk. “G’night Chalk.” And just like that, the intensity of the Courier up into the night air easy as ash and smoke. The man left snoring gently on the ground as if it were comfortable. 

Follows-Chalk sat in silence, the bright red tip of his cigarette burning ever closer to his cheeks. The promise of the Courier, that he too might explore his home, though his interest lied more in Vegas than in the Mojave.

The following day It is raining in Zion. It rains in Zion. The Courier is standing in the silt of a riverbed, his boots eschewed as the day breaks and he washes his feet. His face, tilted upward, his hat moved from his head, the drops of rain hitting the curve of his throat, the open wonder of his eyes, the arch of his back as he bends to admire the dark morning-gray clouds. It’s bright out. It’s not quite a sunshower but the force of dawn-break color peels at the edges of the storm. Follows-Chalk watches him, the unrestrained spirit of exploration that spills out of his gaze. 

“Last night, you told me of your home but did not tell me where it was you were from.” The Courier smiles, a little bit brutal and a little bit proud. 

“Well, I was born somewhere north of Reno, shitty little place can’t imagine it’s still around no more. But I’m _from_ the Mojave and hell knows I’ll likely die there.” Follows-Chalk sits with it a moment, digs the tops of his feet into the sand.

“You do not get rain often where you are from?” 

“No rivers neither. Reservoirs and lakes sure but, I ain’t seen this in a while.” He tilts his head back to look at his guide, his fingers at his forehead. The weight of damp hair presses the strands around his scars, two pained, puckered marks. “I got shot.” He almost didn’t need to say it. Follows-Chalk shifts among the grass and moss. “I haven’t seen rain since it happened, I’d forgotten what it looked like.” He stops there but Follows-Chalk has never been a dumb man, he recognizes the weight of a lost past. He knows very little of his foreign travelling companion. He knows he’s a fine shot, knows he’s good at building fires, and good with animals and hard to deny when he flashes a smile. Yet, there’s something else underneath it all. Follows-Chalk knows the heft of a purpose when he sees it and the man wears a legacy like it’s stitched into his duster. 

“Who are you where you’re from?” A hint of a smile. It curls down Follows-Chalk’s arms and he knows he’s not the first to see it, to feel this way. 

“A courier.” Simple, easy, as though that’s it. 

“You seem,” he doesn’t have the words: important, endless, foolish and suicidal and charming and idiotic and so “much. To be just a courier.” 

“Oh trust me Chalk, I’m just a courier. I’ve done a lot, but I’m a man. I shit and snore and bleed but I think you’ve seen all of that by now.” He laughs and it feels like it could stop the rain. “The reason we’re traveling together is you’re the expert, remember?” 

“I have wanted to ask,” the Courier looks at him with an openness and it almost closes Follows-Chalk’s throat. He swallows and manages to say it “may our time not end with the completion of your business? I will help you eradicate the white legs but I wish this, to explore, to see a world beyond my tribe.” The courier smiles again, wide and cruel and gleaming. He is very beautiful, he is very powerful. 

“Of course!” Like it’s easy. “I never get tired of walking my Mojave, it’s an honor to journey her. And if you want civilization,” the look in his eyes is pride, the rain has turned his cheeks a cold-flush peach. “I’ve got New Vegas in my palms. You’ll love it.” 

“Thank you.” He’s astonished at the invited generosity. Follows-Chalk had expected a rejection, the same speech of duty and homeland he’s always been given “thank you” an astonished joy tugs hard in his chest. “I will.” The courier nods, sets his hat back on his head, moves to exit the river. He gives Follows-Chalk a glance, appreciative, a pleasant agreement. Follows-Chalk cannot move from his spot until the Courier slips on his boots, straps his rifle to his back, and motions for him to follow.

**Author's Note:**

> If only I could have taken Follows-Chalk back to the Mojave with me. Alas. If you read this and liked it congrats on being one of the few Follows-Chalk fans out there, I feel an immense kinship with you.
> 
> leave me a comment! I wanna hear what you guys think, what's your favorite NV DLC (mine isn't honest hearts lol)  
> If you're so inclined you can catch me on twitter @Poetforprofit


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